Latvia
Overview Latvia is one of the 3 Baltic states and has a population of 2.2 million and they are of Balitc (akin to Lithiuanians and Courlanders) oragins.. The capital is is Riga, home to the Riga International Airport. Latvia is a unitary parliamentary republic and is divided into 118 administrative divisions of which 109 municipalities and 9 cities. The nation is a member of the United Nations, European Union, Council of Europe,NATO, OSCE, IMF and WTO, and is part of the Schengen Area. It was a member of the League of Nations (1921–1946) and the Baltic Free Trade Area (1994–2004), the Council of the Baltic Sea States. and is together with Estonia and Lithuania involved in trilateral Baltic States cooperation and Nordic-Baltic cooperation acts. The UN stil lists Latvia as a country with a (HDI) of "Very High". Riga is a member of the Eurocities group, the Union of the Baltic Cities and Union of Capitals of the European Union (UCEU) groups. Riga is also considered a global city. History The Russian Bolshiviks invaded Latvia in 1919, and created the Latvian SSR of 1919-1920, but Eastern Latvia was cleared of Red Army forces by Latvian and Polish troops in early 1920. It is to be noted that from a Polish perspective the Battle of Daugavpils was a part of the Polish-Soviet War. Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union on August 5, 1940 as The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic. During 1940, at least 27,586 people were arrested and most were deported for aleged cooperation with German army, with about 945 persons were shot by the Soviet secret Poilce. Latvia was then administered as part of Germany's Reichskommissariat Ostland during World War 2. The Latvian paramilitary and Auxiliary Police units helped Germany with the Holocaust, with approximately 75,000 Latvian Jews bing murdered by the Germans and their Latvian corlaborators. The mass killings of 2,749 Jews on the beach near the city of Liepāja, took place in December 1941. The Germans made a last stand in 1945 in what was then named as "The Courland Pocket" and "The Battle of Memel". Over 200,000 Latvian citizens died during World War II and Latvian soldiers fought on both sides of the conflict,including in a Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS, most of them conscripted by the occupying Nazi and Soviet authorities agaist their wishes. The Soviets re-annexed Latvia in late 1944 and thousands were again deported. By 1980, it was a leading Soviet republic, but was now about 25-30% Russia (plus many Ukranians and some Byelorussians) and politicaly repressed. Economic stagnation occered in the early 1990s, Latvia calimed to have one of best growth figures between 1998 and 2006. In the 2008–2010 global financial crisis, Latvia was the hardest hit of the European Union member states, due to a mixture of high innternational dets and Germany's predatorial ecanomic polacies with in the EU. The econamy had a sharp GDP decline of 26.54% during the crisis, but the decline had stopped by 2010. The workers' village of Skrunda-1, site of a former Hen House radar installation in Latvia, is now a ghost town that was auctioned off in its entirety in early 2010. The Latvians or Letts (latvieši; laett) have the paternal DNA Haplogroup N1c1 as the most frequent one at 45% of those tested, which also occeres heavly in Finland, northern Siberia and the rest of the Baltic states. Geography and climate The Summers are warm, the weather in spring and autumn is fairly mild, but winters are cold and bitter. Bitterly cold winds and severe snowfalls are very common in the hight of winter. The Vidzeme Uplands (Vidzeme Highland, Latvian: Vidzemes Augstiene). The upland contains the Gaiziņkalns hill, which is the highest point of Latvia. Folklore Some Latvian dainas folk songs often refer to the the oak and linden tree. Folklore the linden tree is looked upon as a female symbol, but the oak as a male symbol and may be the oragin of the nation's reverence for these trees, which in earlier times were considered sacred. It is still posible to finde in the middle of a cultivated field a lone large and, 'sacred oak' or linden tree. Note: This page is not done yet! Please help the wiki by expanding it! Also see *United Baltic Duchy *Duchy of Courland and Semigallia *Grand Duchy of Lithuania *Latvian SSR of 1919-1920 *Baltic Way *Baltics are Waking Up *Singing Revolution *Baltic food *The Alliance of Baltic Countries (ABC) *Russians living in Latvia *Baltic Area in km2 list *The Ethno-genesis of the Baltic peoples *Baltic Republics of the Soviet Union Category:Countries